Health care reform and the End of the World

Despite what you or I think of the bill, it’s something that conservatives and Republicans should have been slobbering over.It manages to cover millions more Americans while actually saving the government money over the next decade. It doesn’t result in a huge new government bureaucracy; there is no public option or single payer/medicare-for-all type program. It uses the mysterious power of the market to improve the process of buying health insurance through “exchanges.” And most conservatively of all, it doesn’t touch the health insurance most Americans already have. You keep what you got.

But despite all that good conservative stuff, Republicans are acting like this bill’s passage is the END OF THE WORLD.

What I hope is that the Democrats take a beating at the ballot boxand rethink their contempt for those mouth-breathing illiterates in the electorate. I hope Obama gets his wish to be a one-term president who passed health care. Not because I think I will like his opponent–I very much doubt that I will support much of anything Obama’s opponent says. But because politicians shouldn’t feel that the best route to electoral success is to lie to the voters, and then ignore them.

Tonight, self-appointed wise men in Washington are steamrolling the objections of sixty to seventy percent of the population, and forcing a massive health-care bill down our throats “for our own good.” Presumably the backroom deals, corrupt payoffs, Congressional Budget Office accounting tricks, threats of unconstitutional parliamentary maneuvers, and betrayals of principle are also for our own good. What do you know? Banana republics turn out to be the highest evolution of government – the only form of the State equipped to take proper care of its citizens, by lying to them and trapping them in legislative cages over their howling protests.

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better.

There simply are no words to describe the damage inflicted yesterday by Democrats upon America, her citizens, and the millions around the globe who look to America for hope – as the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Make no mistake about it – what happened yesterday was not brave, it was cowardly. It was not the best of America, it was the worst. And – at least with respect to the vote itself – it was not Republicans, it was Democrats. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every other Democrat who sold his soul for 30 shekels of silver ignored the clear will of the American people. It was brazen. It was arrogant. And, it was a thumb in the eye of democracy, liberty, and most of all, the American people.

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For some perspective let’s recall that when Republicans were in control of Washington they did they’re own health care reform. In 2003, despite the Iraq war and an economy still recovering from 9/11 and the dot-com bust, Republicans in Congress and George W. Bush passed Medicare Part D, which will not pay for itself over the long run and will funnel roughly $1 trillion in just a decade to big drug companies. Know hypocrisy.